Talk:Women in the workforce

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[edit] drafting

Tagged 6 minutes after posting a first draft; how efficient. This article is needed to explain the existence of the category and why women's participation in particular occupations is an individual field of study. See, e.g, Women's writing in English and the lengthy deletion discussions and deletion reviews on that topic and category. More importantly, this is a well-studied field in academia and a major area of law, and so is an important encyclopedic topic that wikipedia is presently missing. I'll be working on the article and cites are needed (and will be provided). It also needs to be posted to relevant wikiprojects. --Lquilter (talk) 14:54, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Your first reason is a completely wrong reason to create an article (an article as justification for a category?). As for the second: this "well studied field", doesn't it have a name? Gender studies? Something similar? The subject of the article as it stands now seems like a mixture of three distinct related subjects into one new synthesis, which is original resaarch in the Wikipedia sense. Fram (talk) 15:04, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
A few comments below:
  1. Your first reason is a completely wrong reason to create an article (an article as justification for a category?). The article is justified on its own as a well-studied topic. I am creating it now, as opposed to, say, waiting for some other editor to create it, because head articles are needed for categories that are intersections per WP:CATGRS. Or rather, the ability to write a head article justifies these categories; however, many of them do not currently have head articles, so I am planning to create (cited & referenced) stubs for them. To get more background on this issue you might try reading various WP:CFDs on the relevant categories; Category:Female models is the most recent one.
  2. As for the second: this "well studied field", doesn't it have a name? Gender studies? Something similar? Yes. "Women's history", "women's studies", "gender studies" are all well-studied fields, of which occupational studies are a significant part. Article topics can certainly span multiple subjects without being original research, of course, as I'm sure you understand -- that is in fact the whole point of interdisciplinary studies like women's studies. The history of women (and gendering more broadly) within occupations is a well-studied topic in women's studies and the gendering of such occupations is another take on the same topic within gender studies, two significantly overlapping fields (with different approaches) within social sciences. Women's history is of course a subdiscipline of both women's studies and gender studies (and history) so it's natural that a topic would span multiple topics. However, if you have a better idea for the title of the article it would be great to hear it.
I trust you will help to improve the article, and that that was the intent behind tagging it -- to encourage other editors to add more citations to it. --Lquilter (talk) 16:12, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Studies can span multiple fields, and articles can then be made about these studies. Articles should not on their own span multiple subjects though, as thta, again, would be original research. I hope that you, as the creator of this article, would improve it, so that the worries of me, the tagger, are shown to be unneeded. For the moment, I still fail to see how one article will come out of the three topics from the title. This may well be due to some lack of knowledge on my part, but then it is the role of the article to be clear for people who don't already know the subject. Fram (talk) 16:17, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
What are the "three topics" you see here? Perhaps your confusion can be remedied with a better article heading. What about "Gender and women's history in occupations? --Lquilter (talk) 16:23, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I think "Women and gender role division in the workforce" may be a better title and moved it; what do you think? --Lquilter (talk) 18:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
    • While it is at least more focused, and clearer on the potential subject of the article, I still fail to see what exactly this is supposed to be. I don't have the impression that you had any idea what you were going to write when you started the article (I am not suggesting that you don't know the general subjects, but that the focus of the article, what would be included and what not, was undefined). Like you now say, there are tons of potential subjects in gender studies, the history of employment of women, the discrimination of women, etcetera. The long list of books illustrates this, but is not the way to write an article (they don't learn anything, the list of titles doesn't summarize anything). I'll remove the OR template, as the new title is at least more promising of a potential article, but I don't think that at the moment, a casual reader will get anything out of it.Fram (talk) 20:32, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
That's why I put a {{stub}} template on it to start. Frankly, I don't think that one can judge an editor's intent six minutes after an article was posted. That's why **I** take a somewhat humble & cautious approach to tagging articles in fields about which I know very little. Every editor has her own approach, of course. --Lquilter (talk) 22:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
To me , a stub indicates that the article has only the basic info and needs lot of additional info to make it a complete start (not a GA or FA, that's again something completely different). This article, on the other hand, did not contain (for me) the basic info to indicate what it was about at all. I see many new articles, and in almost all cases, I can judge the "editor's intent" or at least the subject of the article in the first draft. That is why this was the first article ever that I put the OR template on. Fram (talk) 11:45, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I see. I'm sorry to have been unclear. The other articles envisioned ("women in medicine", "women in the legal professions", etc.) have much more obvious titles. ... As I'm thinking about it, I wonder if "women in the workforce" is the simplest possible title for this one. What do you think? ... Also, are there stub models you can suggest that will make these other articles clear? --Lquilter (talk) 13:50, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
From what you have done on this article so far, I guess "women in the workforce" may be a good title (or a bit broader, "gender role division in the workforce", looking at both sides). As for stub models... Imagine that the following article only had its first sentence (a mini-stub, really): Minors and abortion. It would not be a good article, of course, but at least the subject would have been clear at first glance. If we compare this with the original (unfinished) version of this article, the third part of the original tiotle (women's history) only is mentioned in the very last sentence, and even then it is unclear (to me) how it should be closely linked to the rest of the subject (it is of course usual to include a historical overview of a subject in an article, but to specifically mention it in the title gives a completely different focus). I hope this helps a bit. Fram (talk) 14:02, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Much better. This is the kind of stub which I would never mark as "original research". A clear, well-defined subtopîc of women's history (or gender studeis or whatever other name), about which a lot can be said from reliable sources. Fram (talk) 08:23, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] references section very lengthy

The references on this topic are going to get very lengthy. The topic badly needs to be split into sub-topics on women in individual professional areas. --Lquilter (talk) 17:15, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Notes: Searching Amazon for "women in the professions" leads to more than 9,760 items on the topic, mostly books. [1] That's just books indexed in Amazon. The literature in journals will be, of course, incredibly lengthy. Suggestions on how to break these topics down other than by individual profession? --Lquilter (talk) 23:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I have begun creating individual sub-topics for individual professions & will move references sections there as appropriate. --Lquilter (talk) 22:23, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] sections for this article

I started this article with a brief summary at the top, but doing a cursory review of the literature has suggested some sections for the article.

  • Individual professional areas - Probably all need to be separate articles
  • History of gendered role division; cultural-specific issues
  • Legal workplace discrimination issues; glass ceiling - Women's workplace discrimination law; frankly this is at least a separate article, ultimately, but for now can be a subsection of this article
  • Women & mentoring - the "old boys network" issues which have been addressed in the literature with a lot of discussion of women's mentoring networks (among other things)
  • "Second Shift" & "Mommy track" & "Work-life balance" - Women in the workplace balancing family and work issues; the imbroglio of the NYT's "dropping out" series; gendering of this issue (male work-life balance) etc.
  • Influence on family and medical leave policy -- FMLA, etc.
  • Influence on workplace codes of conduct; sexual harassment laws; First Amendment backlash
  • Relation of gendering with "professionalization" and profession studies; see., e.g., nursing, teaching, librarianship, as gendered professions; transition of professions from male to female (librarianship) leading to feminization of professions, lower pay, etc.
  • wage gap discussion

There are lots of other sub-topics to women in the workforce. Thoughts on how to arrange, and other missing subtopics? --Lquilter (talk) 18:04, 26 November 2007 (UTC)